The exercise of benevolence Christ never conditioned on human recognition. The publicans and heathen furnished examples on that plane. When Christianity uncovers its roots there is never anything commercial even hinted at. Sinners need salvation. That is enough. Divine love moves in the presence of necessity. Its movement is electric. Even if ingratitude smite it in the face; nay, worse, if malignancy would summon forces for its crucifixion, without relaxing an iota it breathes the prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Unswervingly Christ held along, doing right because it was right. Passion in all its forms of unbalanced feeling lay far beneath His holy life. A righteous indignation against Phariseeism He felt; He was moved with compassion when He saw the people scattered abroad as sheep without a shepherd; in numberless forms in the presence of sorrow and want His emotion was stirred, but the machinations of wicked men against the establishment of righteousness, He contemplated with imperturbable equanimity. It was not merely that He had a strong faith that all such opposition was the imagination of a vain thing. He knew that it was so.
It may not be given His disciples to walk so much by knowledge as did the Master, but where He leads, they can follow in a faith that shall sustain them and give them triumph in every path of duty. Opposition may meet them. Difficulties may lie in the path. Evil men may oppose them, and good men, misinterpreting their motives and misunderstanding their work, may misrepresent them. But what matters it? Conscious in the strength that they are doing right, they will work on unhindered and undisturbed. Christian virtue finds in its own development all the reward necessary to stimulate continuance in well doing.
THE COLORED PEOPLE AT THE NEW ORLEANS EXPOSITION.
The colored people of the United States are just twenty years out of the house of bondage. With long centuries of barbarism and two hundred and fifty years of slavery behind them, they started out homeless, landless, moneyless and experienceless. The New Orleans Exposition was to have exhibits from all lands: Asia, with its millennium of transmitted achievements; Europe, with its centuries of enlightened development; the United States, with their wonderful improvements on the best the world had produced, were all to be there. What show could the twenty-year-old freedmen make in such company? The very idea of their attempting to put in an appearance would seem absurd.
But the colored people desired at least to stand up and be counted. They determined to be there. The entire gallery in one end of the immense Government building was assigned them, and the specimens of their skill more than filled it. They came from nearly every State and Territory in the Union. Their exhibits represented almost every department of mechanical, agricultural and artistic skill. Excellence in workmanship, fertility in invention, tastefulness in the fine arts, were all displayed to a remarkable degree in the large collection. Southerners and Northerners were alike astonished at what their eyes beheld. Those who thought that the negro has no higher mission than to be a "hewer of wood and drawer of water," were compelled either to change their minds or else to say they did not believe that the colored people did the work. It was amusing to hear the remarks of some of the latter class, as they looked at some beautiful specimens of negro handicraft or ingenuity.
It may interest the readers of the Missionary to glance at the great variety of lines along which negro ability put itself on exhibition.
Examination papers from schools were very numerous, showing proficiency in penmanship, spelling, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, free drawing, grammar and translations from the classics; fine needlework of all kinds; millinery; dress-making, tailoring; portrait and landscape painting in oil, water-colors and crayon; photography; sculpture; models of steamboats, locomotives, stationary engines, and railway cars; cotton presses, plows, cultivators, and reaping machines; wagons, buggies; tools of almost all kinds, from the hammer of the carpenter to the finely-wrought forceps of the dentist; piano and organ (both pipe and reed) making; carpentry, cabinet-making; upholstery; tin-smithing; black-smithing, boot and shoe making; basket and broom making; pottery, plain and glazed; brick-making; agricultural products, including all the cereals and fruits raised in the country; silk-worm culture; fruit preserving; flour from a mill, and machinery from a foundry owned by a colored man; patented inventions and improvements, nearly all of them useful and practical, were quite numerous; drugs and medicines; stationery, printing and publishing.